[Taboos and fears in the relationship of the therapist with his own family].

The following article confirms the necessity of family self-encounter of family therapist with a conflict-oriented approach and describes the problems of therapists dealing with their own present family and their family of origin. The empirical basis of this article are the experiences made during a three-years training course for analytic family therapists in Göttingen. Self-encounter with the own present family and family of origin was a substantial part of the course. Encountering families during treatment the therapist is endangered to aspire a rearrangement according to his unfulfilled wishful imaginations of his own family. This may paralyse the therapeutic process considerably. Coming to terms with one's own present family and family of origin is prevented by the unspoken agreement to conceal feelings and experiences in important situations. Especially the suffering of the single family member is taboo. In the family of origin an important reason for this seems to be the fact that children--no matter what age they are--always fear their parents. In the present family an important reason is the pre-conscious fear of having become guilty in respect to the children. Often there are struggles with partners and children to make them act in a different way as parents and brothers and sisters did. One's sore spots have remained the same in the present family and the family of origin. They seem to be exceptionally resistant to change. Repeated struggles about questions of style between partners are often an expression of unresolved ties to the family of origin, which do not permit partnership. A main result of the direct confrontation with the own family of origin was the insight that all participants had overestimated the degree of their individuation. Beyond the possibilities of training analysis, in which dyadic interactions are reproduced in the experience of the trainee, ego-syntonic behaviour and character armours became obvious, which were not perceptible in the transference relation. As an additional important access to the emotional network of one's own family the genogram--the genealogical tree constructed from a family dynamic point of view--is described.